ABSTRACT
This war experience has found its way into several expressions of collective memory, including the diorama at the base of the National Monument in Jakarta, and feature films such as Badja membara (1961) and R÷omusha (1973). However, the wartime employment of Indonesian laborers received only limited attention from academic researchers until the 1990s, when two Japanese historians, Aiko Kurasawa and Shigeru Sato, each published research showing that systematic mass recruitment and relocation of Javanese laborers outside of Java was part of Japan’s overall labor policy.1 Even larger numbers of “volunteers” worked within Java constructing roads, tunnels, canals, and railways, or filling jobs in agriculture and industry. Very few Javanese, it seems, escaped the labor drafts. According to Sato, as many as 10 million menalmost the entire “mobilizable” element in a population of 50 million-were employed for shorter or longer periods during these three and a half years.2 The exact number of people sent out of Java cannot be determined, but several postwar reports mention a credible figure of 300,000.3
While some information is now available concerning the recruitment of Javanese r ÷omusha, the situation in the rest of the archipelago remains little known. The discussion that follows examines the labor situation in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, a region administered by the Japanese navy, by looking at the Celebes (Sulawesi), the Moluccas (Maluku), New Guinea (Irian), and Borneo (Kalimantan), paying attention both to local recruitment and to the use of Javanese r ÷omusha in these areas.4 It will become evident that Japanese labor drafts caused great hardship and much loss of life, and that the different types of labor mobilization complemented each other.
